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    "headline": "Harrison Ford’s 800-acre Wyoming ranch is trending again, but its protection from development dates to 1",
    "description": "The Jackson Hole land along the Snake River was protected decades ago; a conservation easement lets an owner keep the title while giving up development rights forever.",
    "datePublished": "2026-10-18T04:02:00+01:00",
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    "articleBody": "The Harrison Ford ranch story circulating this week is a 41-year-old one. The actor bought an 800-acre property along the Snake River in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the mid-1980s, and starting in 1985 he signed a series of conservation easements that bar substantial development on much of it. Nothing new has been filed or announced this week; what has changed is how many people are now asking what an easement is. What Ford bought Ford and his then-wife, Melissa Mathison, first looked at property around Sun Valley before settling on Jackson Hole, the valley at the base of the Teton Range. They were offered a choice: carve out a few acres with the existing house, or take the house and the whole tract. They took all of it. “It had everything I ever wanted,” Ford said. The land held elk and mule deer on migration, nesting bald eagles and blue herons, and native cutthroat trout in the river. Ford, who paid his way as a carpenter before Star Wars, designed the main house himself, faxing fresh instructions to the builders every morning while he was shooting Roman Polanski’s Frantic in Paris. He later helped the same crew put up a guest house and a large barn that he uses as a workshop. Why the easements mattered in 1985 Ford was early. Stephen Small, who helped draft the federal tax rules on easements, has said that “back in the 1980s, very few people knew anything about conservation easements, and there were very few active land trusts.” The Jackson Hole Land Trust received some of the first important ones, and Small singled Ford out: “I think Ford was the first star to get involved.” Ted Turner and Robert Redford came later. Accounts of how much ground is covered differ. One retelling published on Wednesday, October 14, says about half the estate; a 2007 profile of Ford said only that the restrictions apply to much of his land. How a conservation easement works A conservation easement is a voluntary, legally binding deal between a landowner and a qualified land trust or government agency. The owner keeps the title, keeps living there and keeps managing the land, but gives up specific rights. On Jackson Hole Land Trust easements those typically include the rights to develop, subdivide and mine the surface; the trust holds them so nobody can use them. Four details make it stick: It runs with the land. The restriction binds every future owner, not just the one who signed, and is recorded in the property’s chain of title. It is usually permanent. To qualify for the federal deduction under Section 170(h) of the US tax code, it must be perpetual and held by a qualified nonprofit or government body. Someone has to police it. The holder monitors the property and can enforce the terms if they are broken. It does not open the land to the public. Most easements give no access to hikers or anglers; the land stays private. The money side is a simple subtraction. An appraiser values the property before and after the restriction, and the gap is the value of the donated easement. One published estimate puts the drop at 35% to 65% of a property’s value. On a hypothetical ranch worth $10 million before the easement, that range works out to a gift worth between $3.5 million ($10 million x 0.35) and $6.5 million ($10 million x 0.65), with the land then worth $3.5 million to $6.5 million. The system has a darker side that Ford’s case predates by decades. The Internal Revenue Service says promoters of so-called syndicated easements have sold investors inflated deductions, and that in those cases the Tax Court has on average allowed about 6% of the amount claimed while adding a 40% penalty. The ranch now As of 2023, Ford and his wife, actor Calista Flockhart, were living much of the time on the ranch, and he flies the family there himself. “When I’m up in Wyoming, I just walk out the door and keep walking,” he said in a 2020 interview. The Jackson Hole Land Trust, which was little known outside the valley when he signed his first easement, now reports more than 66,000 acres protected across Northwest Wyoming.",
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